Torch-Lights D3’s path to consoles?

Posted By: March 12, 2010

Max Schaefer of Runic Games (and formerly of Blizzard North) mentioned in a new podcast that the Torchlight developers are working on porting their recent dungeon crawler over to consoles. This isn’t exactly earth-shaking news, but since every article about Torchlight is contractually-obligated to include some sort of Diablo 3 parallel, Mtv’s gaming blog and The Escapist did just that.

“We’re going to put some serious effort into it – pretty quick – getting Torchlight onto consoles,” Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer told The Rumble Pack. “There’s a lot of really cool things about the console world, too, that would work well with our game.”

The sentiment is certainly appreciated, as is the idea of a larger console audience getting to experience the loot-driven pure that is Torchlight. More people getting to experience an awesome game – what’s bad about that? But it isn’t like there aren’t difficulties with the idea: Torchlight, like Diablo, is very heavily based around rapid-fire clicking with the mouse to attack, use abilities, and pick up all the loot the drops. It’s not impossible to imagine that the system could be adapted to consoles, but controllers are just inherently less precise than computer mice for that sort of thing.

Still, if Runic pulls it off, it might encourage Blizzard to do the same for Diablo III. And wouldn’t that be awesome? Unlike RTS games, ARPGs are one of the primarily-PC genres that could potentially be viable on consoles.

This issue has come up before, and been greeted with very mixed feelings. For every fan who would like to play Diablo on their Xbox or PS3, one (or more) lament the possibility, generally in terms of an onslaught of foul-mouthed, immature TV-gaming kiddies, driving the rest of us to insta-mute all other players in every Battle.net game. What’s your take? D3 on consoles; good or bad?